Skip to content
Home >> Accessibility Tests

Line Spacing

Adequate line-spacing helps the eye to travel along the text smoothly, without hesitation or thought. The longer the lines of text the more space required between the lines so that, as the user's eye returns to the beginning of the next line, they do not get confused. Calculating the best line spacing for a particular piece of text is not an exact science and will depend upon the font used as well as the line length. For a general purpose website the W3C recommends line spacing of 150% (1.5ems), but this will depend upon the font face and you may well need to use a larger space for serif fonts.

Website Accessibility Testing

Our website accessibility testing service provides independent certification that your site meets the W3C Accessibility Initiative guidelines. We even offer free email support and a free retest if you make the required corrections within eight weeks. Sites that pass the test are awarded a certificate of compliance.

Order your test on-line now.

Testing the accessibility of your website

Some accessibility barriers can be identified by software, but most barriers require a human to check. That is why, in addition to our experts, we also ask real people using their assistive software to check all the sites we test.

The de-facto standards for testing accessibility - the W3C Accessibility Initiative Guidelines (WCAG) - are used as a basis for our website accessibility tests. However we always supplement testing against the guidelines with "real world" user experience. We use input from panels of disabled users to support our specialist technical analysis. Once your site has been tested to be sufficiently compliant with the W3C guidelines at the appropriate level and demonstrably usable by disabled people we issue an accessibility compliance certificate. This will allow you to demonstrate that independent specialists, as well as disabled users, have verified that your website provides an effective level of service for all users.

The website accessibility test results are sent to you by email as a short PDF report. For more details please see below. If you need a fuller report, with detailed explanations of problems found and a detailed action plan for improvements, then you should consider our Website Accessibility Reports.

Testing For Compliance With The W3C Accessibility Initiative Guidelines (WCAG)

Our test reports give a Pass, Fail or Near mark for each of the accessibility checkpoints at the level being tested. Where appropriate we make a short comment to clarify why a particular mark has been given.

To complete the test we undertake the following actions:

  1. Set a series of appropriate tasks for some members of our disabled user panel to complete.
  2. Validate the HTML code for a representative sample of pages, including all entry pages, site maps, primary content pages, templated areas and interactive pages.
  3. Validate the style sheets (CSS files) to check compliance.
  4. Conduct a series of manual checks for compliance with each of the WAI guidelines using the W3C accessibility checklist.
  5. Collate the results from steps 1 to 4 into a standard score sheet and add comments if required.

For websites up to 250 pages you can order by credit or debit card using the secure Papal system. Level 1 (A) tests cost £249, Level 2 (AA) tests £499 and Level 3 (AAA) tests £599. All these prices exclude UK VAT. If you prefer to pay by other methods or you are not liable for payment of UK VAT you can indicate this when you place your order and we will contact you to discuss invoicing details.

Order your test on-line now.

Testing for compliance with the United States Government S508 accessibility guidelines

We can also test websites for compliance with the USA Section 508 accessibility checklist. The price for this is £249 plus VAT. For larger sites (those with multiple, separately edited, sections), or if you would like to discuss your requirements with us please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or use our contact form.